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The legend-in-his-own-mind speaks out against this new outrage at NYC Gabfest.

Barack Obama has set his sights on something bigger than winning a second term as president of the declining and much-maligned (not least by himself) superpower known as the United States of America. He now aims to end "the injustice, the outrage," and, not to mince words, the pestilential global scourge of -- hold your breath -- "modern slavery."

The president announced this monumental new undertaking in a speech yesterday to the Clinton Global Initiative. The CGI is an "invitation only" annual gabfest that extracts $20,000 from each of thousands of big-thinking and apparently sleep-challenged invitees who regard the old gasbag Bill Clinton as some kind of an intellectual colossus. This is how Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard described the organization in an article Americans have gotten a little tired of Sweden, and it is not just because of the model on Feb. 27 of this year:

CGI is the kind of charity that students of Clinton's career would expect him to lead: It hires a legion of over-schooled high-achievers and collects mountains of money and, instead of giving the money to poor people, hospitals, doctors, nurses, food banks, or stuff like that, spends it on an annual conference in which high-achievers talk for long periods of time about what it would be like if they were going to do stuff like that. It is an organization devoted to talk.

A perfect fit, you might say. This is the organization and the audience that our 44th president addressed in picking up long-disused cudgels of 19th century liberals who championed the (real) anti-slavery cause. Let us leave aside the fact that the 19th century liberals were diametrically opposed in almost every important way from the 21st century mountebanks who call themselves liberals or progressives.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil;Who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness;Who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyesAnd clever in their own sight! Isaiah 5:20-21 NASB

Is it The Spectator's position that there is no such thing as human trafficking? That's how I read the article, that "real" slavery is what happened prior to the Civil War, not anything that could be happening now. That was institutional slavery, human trafficking is much more insidious in some ways.

I really don't know how much the Clinton Global Iniative is really doing about the issue, but anyone who lives in a city with an "Asian Massage Parlor" should realize that there is human trafficking and it even happens in the US. This is also a big issue in a lot of church organizations-one of the things about child sponsorship programs is that they help protect children from the predators that would use them in such horrible ways.

Is it The Spectator's position that there is no such thing as human trafficking? That's how I read the article, that "real" slavery is what happened prior to the Civil War, not anything that could be happening now. That was institutional slavery, human trafficking is much more insidious in some ways.

Obama's definition of slavery was rather... shall we say, loose? From the article:

But around the world there's no denying the awful reality. When a man, desperate for work, toiling, for little or no pay, beaten if he tries to escape -- that is slavery. When a woman is locked in a sweatshop, or trapped in a home as a domestic servant, alone and abused and incapable of leaving -- that's slavery.

That could mean anything from human trafficking in domestics (the Saudis are by far the worst offenders there) to marriage, in the case of the woman. It's vague to the point of meaninglessness, not unlike "Hope and Change" and F

Originally Posted by noonwitch

I really don't know how much the Clinton Global Iniative is really doing about the issue, but anyone who lives in a city with an "Asian Massage Parlor" should realize that there is human trafficking and it even happens in the US. This is also a big issue in a lot of church organizations-one of the things about child sponsorship programs is that they help protect children from the predators that would use them in such horrible ways.

Do you doubt for a moment that Clinton isn't intimately aware of the existence of Asian Massage Parlors?